Tamara (given name)


Tamara is a female given name most commonly derived from the Biblical name "Tamar", meaning "date", "date palm" or "palm tree." In central and eastern European countries like Armenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia and Ukraine it has been a common name for centuries. In Australia it was very popular from the 1960s to 1990s.
In the United States, the name was fairly common from the late 1950s to mid 1990s, bolstered by the popularity of the film Tammy and the Bachelor. In the US the most girls named Tamara were born in 1970 and the number of Tamaras born per year was greater than 1,000 as late as 1996.
The name is now fairly uncommon in the US: in 2010, the name fell off the Top 1000 SSA Baby Names list, with fewer than 250 baby girls named Tamara that year.

Variants

Variations include Tamar, Temara, Tamra, Tamera, and Tamora. In North America Tamara is typically pronounced ; in the United Kingdom and Australia it is sometimes pronounced as ; and in Russia /tɐˈmɑːrɐ/. In Arabic it is pronounced /tæˈmæːræ/. The most common US nickname for Tamara is Tammy or Tam, but other nicknames exist, such as Tatia Tamar Tamuna, Tamari, Tamriko or Tako in Georgia, Toma in Russia, Mara, Tama or Tara.
One notable occurrence of the name 'Tamora' in literature is a character in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. In this play, Tamora is an ambitious and vengeful woman. Her sons plan to rape the daughter of Titus Andronicus and Tamora refuses the girl's pleas to stop them. Titus, in revenge for the brutal rape and disfigurement of his daughter, kills the young men, has them baked into a pie, and serves the pie to Tamora. Titus tells her that she has just eaten her sons immediately before killing her.

Notable people